Working on a remote terminal

If you're working on a remote terminal and your repository get's complicated, but you don't have desktop tools like meld or gitk to look at it, you can copy the remote repo to your desktop with rsync, even if you have to jump through a bastion host with something like:

If that complains about host-key verification, then simply do an SSH first to the host, accept the host key identity, and logout. Now the rsync will work because the host-key is already accepted as valid.

Tracking remote branches

Checkout a specific branch from origin, and track it.
What if you enter git checkout -b REL1_29 when you *should have entered* git checkout -b REL1_29 origin/REL1_29? Just tell git that you meant to track the branch in origin: git branch --set-upstream-to=origin/REL1_29 REL1_29 Set upstream doesn't do what's intended here! You should delete the branch that you created as a 'copy'; and then checkout the branch correctly. To checkout the branch correctly, just IGNORE the -b flag altogether. If you do use the -b flag, then you must use the long form that references the remote branch to track. If you just do a 'git checkout foo' and there exists the same branch upstream at origin/foo then git will checkout a new branch set to track the remote.

Tracing in Status

Add GIT_TRACE=1 to your command to see more of what's going on. (Note that there are no spaces and no semicolon.)

GIT_TRACE=1 git status

Just the facts

Want simple red/green diff lines?

See all the changes in color, but without any context lines, and without the leading +/-/[space]
This makes it easy to grab changes and stuff them in another file for example.

git diff -U0 --color myfile | sed -r "s/^([^-+ ]*)[-+ ]/\\1/"

What is this miscellaneous file, and how does it compare to what's in my repo?

Say you've got a config file lying around (untracked) in your local working tree. It's not in your current project branch, but you know it's an important file. How does it compare to what's in the freephile remote, es128 branch version of the file?

Add that forgotten file

You forgot to add a file to the last commit? Just add it to the index, and commit with --amend. Added a file that shouldn't be there? git rm it. If you leave off the -m (message) option in the new commit, it will let you re-use the last commit message. This lets you "undo the last commit" and redo it right. You usually do not want to amend a commit if you've already pushed it to other repos, but if it's just local --amend is awesome-sauce.

How do you ignore a directory, but make an exception? What if you already added certain directories to git but want to stop tracking them now (ie. "take them out of version control")?
A combination of editting your .gitignore file and git rm --cached to the rescue. I had accidentally added and committed some files into git which should have been ignored because they are 3rd party files managed by Composer. I fixed my .gitignore to track only what I want while ignoring a parent directory:

Then you simply remove all files from git's index, and add them back (only now adding them back will look to .gitignore for the corrected rules)

git rm -r --cached .
git add .
git commit -m 'ignoring vendor/*'

Tags

With git, you can just tag something with git tag foo. This produces a 'lightweight' tag [2]. Use "annotated tags" whenever you want to know when something was tagged and who did it. Pass an empty message if you really don't care or need extra annotation.

When using git between a local repository and a single 'origin' remote, it's a simple process to work locally and push things back up to origin. But, what if you have a separate remote repository... perhaps on GitHub, or a collaborator who has similar sources but not using your origin (so disconnected, and perhaps not even linked ancestrally like a fork). How do you add that other remote to your project and then pull in the code "they" have on top of yours? Here's an example of how we started with a repo from github and added a repo that we were developing privately. (The reality is that we were developing a repo privately; created a sibling version of the code at github; and then wanted to re-incorporate the changes of the github repo back into our private repo.)

# start with one 'origin' remote
git clone https://github.com/freephile/qb.git
# add another remote that has similar code
git remote add private greg@eqt:/home/greg/src/ad.git
# check
git remote -v
# rename it for the host it came from
git remote rename private eqt
# pull our 'eqt' remote onto the master branch of the code we got from 'origin'
git pull eqt master
# But there are some unversioned files in the way (git complains)# So, create a new 'dev' branch and stuff all the new things there (which we can either delete, or resume later)
git checkout -b dev
git add hosts package.json requirements.txt scripts/
git commit -m 'stashing some files into a dev branch'
git checkout master
# now we can merge again
git pull eqt master
# git complains about some merge conflicts (changes on both sides so it can't just do a fast-forward)# edit those files to remove the conflict markers and get them the way you want them
git add install* launch.yml
# finish your merge by committing the result
git commit -m 'merged additional plays from eqt'# and push upstream to 'origin'
git push
# and push to other remote 'eqt'
git push eqt

Put your project on GitHub

Been hacking away on a project and now it's time to unveil it? Here are the quick and easy steps to get your local repo into your GitHub account.

# first make a "bare" clone# from your server
git clone --bare greg@example.com:/var/www/baz.com/www/project
# or from a local directory
git clone --bare /tmp/project
# produces project.git directorycd project.git
# push that to your new project (created via browser at GitHub.com)
git push --mirror https://github.com/USER/project.git
# go back to the original project foldercd /tmp/project
# optionally remove local remotes that are no longer needed
git remote remove origin
# add GitHub as a remote named 'github' (assuming SSH key-based auth)
git remote add github git@github.com:USER/project.git
# pull in anything from 'upstream' (assuming that now GitHub is the canonical source)
git pull github master
# push any changes up; setting the new remote as the upstream for the 'master' branch
git push --set-upstream github master
# from now on you can just 'git push' from master

Create a README from a webpage

Now create a fine README file using pandoc to convert your webpage to Markdown